


between the daylight and the deep sea

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: let the human in (whumptober 2020) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Dehumanization, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Medical Torture, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Torture, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27307903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: “You know what this is?” Pierce asks. With the gag, Loki cannot respond. “You’d think it was revenge, and sure, that part’s going to be fun. But you’re the future. You’re an opportunity. For us to make advances we haven’t even dreamed of since 1945.” The year means absolutely nothing to Loki. “You’re our new shot at greatness.”You didn't think they'd really let Loki go so easily, did you?Alexander Pierce sees an opportunity for a new start, and Loki vanishes into HYDRA.[Avengers: Endgame canon divergence.]
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Series: let the human in (whumptober 2020) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993756
Comments: 28
Kudos: 140
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	between the daylight and the deep sea

**Author's Note:**

> written for whumptober 2020, day 31: Today's Special: Torture (experiment) 
> 
> warnings: torture, human experimentation, blood, non-consensual drug use
> 
> fic title: 'Slow Life,' Of Monsters and Men

Loki had thought Thor’s little protective stance utterly ridiculous when he did it. Perhaps he should not have been so flippant, bound and gagged as he was. But what could these humans do to the likes of him? So Thor’s little move to place his body in front of his, to use his most grave and authoritarian voice to tell the mortals that they would not in fact get their hands on him, seems absurd in the moment..

Loki smirks behind his gag. The older one, dressed in a crisp suit, his eyes promise revenge. His eyes have resolve in them. But even the strongest mortal authority would never be any match for Asgard’s will. Thor’s scarlet clad shoulder moves into his vision, blocking out the man.

He should have taken their threat more seriously. That becomes clear later, with the encroaching darkness, the hands on his limbs, and the sense of being torn away from something.

Loki eventually learns the man’s name is Alexander Pierce, and he has grand plans that he does little more than allude to. Loki never quite learns the details of those plans. The mortals’ goals are very often secondary to his suffering.

He comes to lying flat on his back, in a room lit by dim blue lights. His armor has been stripped away, replaced by rough cloths against his skin. He is strapped to a table, restraints binding his legs together, more straps pinning his arms palms facing up to the sides.

Loki tries to shake off the residual drowsiness from whatever they drugged him with, but his mind is still clouded. _This is not Asgard_ , he thinks and nearly laughs, but chokes on the gag. _Where am I?_

He doesn’t know. He’s only slowly coming to the realization that the humans may have been more of a threat to his person than he had initially anticipated. He wonders where Thor is.

They leave him to stew for a while, lying on his back and unable to do much other than look up at the ceiling and wait for the drugs to clear.

The door opens and people surge in. The man in the suit - Pierce - another man wearing a long dark jacket who never speaks, and two scientists in white coats.

“Welcome back,” Pierce says. “You really thought we’d let you get away, didn’t you?”

He did. He’d been stupid. He and Thor both, playing with the Midgardians. They hadn’t know what they were facing. Foolish. They’d underestimated these mortals. Loki had assumed their threats were empty. He’d been getting ready to face Odin again. But now he finds himself bound fast to a table, somewhere on Midgard, at the mercy of these mortals.

“You know what this is?” Pierce asks. With the gag, Loki cannot respond. “You’d think it was revenge, and sure, that part’s going to be fun. But you’re the future. You’re an opportunity. For us to make advances we haven’t even dreamed of since 1945.” The year means absolutely nothing to Loki. “You’re our new shot at greatness.”

_A pretty speech_ , Loki thinks. He hopes he can convey his animosity through his eyes.

Pierce grins. “A new start. Don’t disappoint me.”

Pierce leaves the scientists with him.

They treat him like a thing. At first that’s the worst part. He struggles against his bonds, filled with rage, wishing desperately to scream at them, to demand they respect him for the prince he is.

_But you’re not a prince,_ a voice that hisses like The Other in his ear. That shuts him up for a while as they poke and prod at him, taking various vitals signs, tittering at the results. Their hands are not gentle. He is a thing. They make that much clear.

He’s not always on the table. He’s given a small cell, in a long, dark row of them just off the laboratory. He’s taken there by armed guards who oversee his removal from the table. They cuff his hands together and chain his ankles so he can only take short steps.

He paces in his cell. He holds off taking their food as long as possible, but eventually his stomach is sick and empty and he can’t sense any poisons in it, so he eats. It’s awkward with his close bound hands and the first few nights he can only manage a little, and even that makes him feel nauseous.

The guards come for him but instead of taking him to the laboratory for more tests, they bring him to another cell with a table and chair. Pierce returns, asking him questions about Asgard, about the Tesseract, about his powers.

“I will save you some time,” Loki says. “These are the last words you’ll hear from my mouth. You may continue puzzling out what you can from my body, but I won’t give you the answers you seek. You’re not the first to question me, and I assure you, I held out through far worse than your primitive human minds could ever hope to imagine.”

They do their best to…entice him to answer. Batons than shock him until he screams. Icy water than he laughs at, mocking their attempt, and heat that he doesn’t laugh at. Pierce quickly grows frustrated at their failed attempts.

“We’ll make you talk,” he says. His hands are shaking with rage but his expression and voice is calm.

“You can’t. Might as well just kill me.”

“No. Not yet.”

Loki has to give it to the mortals. They are quite ingenious with their drug cocktails. Not even Thanos had come up with something to loose his tongue so quickly.

It comes as a gas. A hissing in his cell, a vent in the floor that expels noxious smelling gas. Loki tries to hold his breath, cover his nose and mouth with a hand, but he still has to breathe. The cloud of it hangs heavy around him and when he finally can’t hold his breath anymore, he gasps it in. It burns, and only takes a few breaths before his awareness blinks out.

He comes to feeling exhausted, his tongue and lips feel swollen and cracked. He’s sitting on the floor of his cell, hanging his head. Pierce sets a cup of water on the floor in front of him.

“Thank you for your information. It was very helpful.”

He waits until he’s left alone to take the water and guzzle it down. He feels sick to his stomach for hours, he’s not sure if it’s from the side effects of the drugs or the shame.

They take blood. They take a lot of blood. It flows from his veins through clear tubes into larger basins. Pouring from him until his head is spinning and he feels dizzy and sick. He doesn’t know what they do with his blood, but they take a lot of it.

There are terrible curses one could perform with no more than a small vial of blood. To take this much, they must be preparing for very dark magic indeed, Loki thinks deliriously once as he watches the scarlet blood drip down the tube.

He loses weight. He has no access to a mirror, but can feel himself wasting away. Sometimes they take photographs of him. He’s sure they’ll see a steady decline.

He wonders how the photographs would compare to his decline on Sanctuary. Though there, he was eventually allowed to recover so he would be fit to command the Chitauri armies.

“We’ve got a new test compound today,” the male scientist says. “It won’t be permanent but we have to see if it works, and how long it lasts.”

There’s a clock set up. They take his vital signs, hook him up to the machines that offer constant feedback of his heart rate, his breathing. Curiously, the two scientists confer for a moment and then bring forth additional straps to further secure him to the table. They tighten others, like they’re ready for him to struggle extra hard against this one.

“Just a mild sedative,” the woman says. “We’re throwing the readings off while we’re getting ready.”

The prick of a needle in his arm and the additional straps don’t seem quite so concerning. There’s a lot of talking above him. A lot of measuring liquid. They take more blood, just a couple vials this time.

The sedative is just starting to wear off, Loki’s just starting to feel a prickle of apprehension at how tightly he has been bound to the table, when they stick a needle into the IV tube and plunge in a single dose of a clear liquid. It burns as it goes into his vein and Loki twitches, shifting away as much as he can. Is this meant to be torture? Is that what they’re testing?

It is. Not the kind he initially thinks.

It takes only thirty seconds for the true purpose of the compound to make itself known. The scientists talk amongst themselves, make notes, and then suddenly - it’s like a candle being blown out. Loki’s magic, the core of his power that has been held just out of his reach since this ordeal had begun, snuffs out entirely, leaving behind a dark hole of ice.

It’s _agony_.

They were right to bind him tighter. He bucks at the restraints like a desperate animal, howling through the gag in his mouth. The coldness seeps into his bones. The panic, that he has been cut off from his soul.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts. They’re timing him, making notes of vital signs and reactions, so they must know. Must be able to calculate the exact timespan of the drug’s efficacy. It feels like an eternity.

When they release him into the cell, in his chains, he screams into his hands for a long time. His magic has returned and though it’s still out of his reach - feeling always like an itch he cannot scratch - its presence is at least is something of a comfort. He curls as tight into a corner of the cell as he can, folding into a tight ball.

He spends the night whispering old spells under his breath, rocking back and forth in a feeble effort to soothe himself.

He’s ready to beg, when Alexandre Pierce appears again, for death or freedom. “I hear you’re making very good progress. You’re helping us a great deal.”

Loki’s in his chains. Pierce is looking at him through the barred door. “We have more questions.”

“Fuck you,” Loki spits, instead of begging. He adds a few curses in various dialects for good measure. “I’ll kill you all.”

The gas hisses before Pierce responds. “Sure you will.”

He regains consciousness again, untold hours later, alone, with the feeling of cotton on his tongue. With a sore throat and absolutely no memory of what was asked, or what he answered.

They’re prepping him for another surgery, another exploratory surgery of his abdomen. The last incision is neatly healed, not even leaving a scar. Loki has no scars. None visible, anyway. He doesn’t know if that is a blessing of Asgardian biology, or a curse.

There’s mask over his nose and mouth. Gases flow, taking away his concerns. There’s the clatter of instruments, metallic sounds nearby. The burn of the paralytic that steals his control, but not enough sensation. This is going to hurt. He shuts his eyes tight, trying to keep himself calm, reminding himself it is no different from the Titan’s torture, he had withstood that for a year, he can survive this a little longer-

The drugs make it hard to figure out what happens next. There are sounds, clattering and shouts and angry sounds. Roars. He can’t wrap his mind around what it all means.

The sedative is not long acting. He’s long believed they like it when he can feel the pain. So while he cannot move, he slowly regains the functions of his mind. He understands that there has been no knife, no incision. Instead, there is a hand in his hair and a muffled, familiar voice that is gradually growing clearer. Loki blinks his eyes open, in shock.

Thor’s hand in his hair. Impossible. “I’ve been looking for you a long time,” Thor says. Loki chokes. “Don’t try to speak. I’m getting you out of here, just as soon as the others finish off the rest of the HYDRA base.” Loki doesn’t know what HYDRA is. They never identified themselves to him, the people in the suits and the white scrubs. He manages to twitch a hand, the paralysis wearing off. He heaves in a bigger breath, ignoring Thor’s efforts to soothe him, and flops his head to the side. His tormentors, the nameless scientists that never addressed him, but poked and prodded and violated him, lie dead on the floor. He can’t quite see their heads, but he can see the spreading pools of blood.

“I may have lost my temper a bit,” Thor says sheepishly. “Worried about what lightning might do to all this metal so...” 

So he beat them to death instead. If Loki could speak, he would say something biting about it being the first smart thing Thor had ever done. But he can’t speak and he’s not even really inclined anymore. His eyes are stinging.

Thor has gone back to carefully removing the needles and wires and patches that have been threaded through his skin and veins. Loki desperately wants him to remove the restraints, but also doesn’t trust himself not to roughly tear them from his skin, not to claw at himself with his ragged fingernails. He’s slowly getting more control over his body back, now that the paralytic is fading. He gives a shudder, little more than a feeble twitch against the leather straps.

“It’s okay,” Thor says in a whisper and it’s absurdly comforting. “A moment more.” The last needle bleeds a bit as it comes out. Thor presses painfully hard to get it to stop. “So pale…”

Loki hasn’t seen himself in a mirror in a long time. However long he’s been in here. He knows he’s lost a lot of blood and not seen the sun since that brief moment on the tower during the battle. Though, it’s not the longest he’s gone without seeing the sun.

The bleeding under control, Thor finally turns to the straps. He makes quick work of the buckles, freeing him from the cursed stretcher. Loki struggles to sit up, to swing his sluggish limbs over the edge, but the paralytic is still hobbling him. Thor helps him sit up, braces him as he wavers, breathing hard.

“Thor,” he rasps. “I have to tell you something. The Tesseract…” He told Pierce so much. Thor knows nothing.

Thor regards him with a curious expression. “There will be time for that, brother. Later.”

Loki huffs, slumping. “You’re sure?”

Thor’s expression softens. He runs his hand through Loki’s hair, heedless of how filthy it is. “I’m just glad I found you. There will be time for the rest later. We know…well, we know enough.”

Loki wonders how much he gave away, during those blurry, drug clouded interrogations. Or if Thor and his friends had found some other source of information.

There are sounds of an explosion coming from somewhere above them. They both glance up at the ceiling.

“Can you stand?” Thor asks.

Loki wishes he could say yes, but he’s already wavering. His legs are still numb. He’s only taken shuffling steps around his small cell in months. He mutely shakes his head.

Thor nods, then unclasps his cape from his own shoulders and swings it around Loki’s. “Come, brother.”

“You keep calling me that,” Loki slurs. “Like it means something. Like it is not a lie.”

He expects Thor to look stung by that, but there is no change to his expression. “Does it not mean something?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Loki answers honestly. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

“We have to get out of here. We’ll have time for that too.”

Loki nods. Thor bends and hooks one arm behind his knees, braces the other around his shoulders, making sure to keep the cape neatly wrapped around Loki’s body. The change of position leaves Loki breathless and dizzy. When it fades, they’re already out in the hallway, moving from the laboratory to the cells where others had screamed, then quickly to the set of stairs at the end. Loki finds himself resting his head against Thor’s shoulder, breathing in the smell of the leather and polish he uses. Things that make him thing of Asgard.

The light of freedom hits his eyes and he cries out in pain. Thor shushes him, pauses his gait for a moment to draw the edge of his clock up to cover Loki’s face, dimming the light. Thor’s footsteps shift from metal to stone, then to dirt.

“We got the package?” Stark’s voice.

“Picked up a few extra.” Natasha. “We need to radio ahead for more med assistance.”

The sunlight dims, Thor’s footsteps change again to metal, sloping upwards. Thor sits him down on something hard, a bench, but before he can move away, Loki’s fingers close as claws around whatever bit of him he can grab.

“I’m not leaving,” Thor whispers to him. “I’ll be right here.” He’s just readjusting his position on the bench, sitting beside him and opening his arms.

Loki forgets his pride, forgets all that happened in the past few years, and like a child turns into Thor’s embrace to hide from the world.

On the jet, on the way back to New York, wrapped in his brother’s cloak and his arms, Loki drifts to an exhausted, weary sleep. He dreams of nothing but the image of Thor’s back, stepping in front of him as a shield.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Just a little bit of torture to celebrate the holiday, and kick off me actually posting what I've got done for whumptober this year. There's a posting schedule. You can [find it on tumblr,](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/post/633510564712316929/a-last-whumptober-2020-update-so-i-didnt-manage) if you'd like!. It's uh, perhaps a little bit Type A of me, but....I like to be organized and I like to take everything too seriously. 
> 
> Speaking of taking things too seriously, all fic titles this month _are_ overwrought and pretentious, and are all from Of Monsters and Men songs. Because one of the prompt titles ('Breathe In, Breathe Out') reminded me of their song 'Human' which would always get stuck in my head when I looked at the prompt list, so I decided to just run with it. Anyways!
> 
> I've been percolating on a human experimentation fic like...before Endgame even came out, but of course, that one sort of suggestive scene in the New York flashback was....intriguing. I actually have a longer, more plot-based one, that actually features how Thor & Co. figure out about HYDRA, etc, etc, but I thought this quick little plotless fic worked well for whumptober. (And like...two cakes, and all that. I can write more than one of these. Probably will, in fact.)
> 
> I hope you 'enjoyed'! As always comments/kudos/shares/frogs always appreciated! Will be back tomorrow for the second entry in the whumptober series. (And it _will_ be a series this year. So if you want to track it, you'll have to follow the series, I won't be adding to this fic anymore, unlike in years past.) 
> 
> Happy Halloween! <3


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